


At The End Of All Things

by SnuggleKitten



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F, F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-06-12
Updated: 2012-06-11
Packaged: 2017-11-07 13:06:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/431514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnuggleKitten/pseuds/SnuggleKitten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Hermione dies, Harry is willing to do anything to save her. Lunar Harmony. Weasley bashing. Redo. No slash. Possible femslash.</p>
            </blockquote>





	At The End Of All Things

-o-AN-o-  
This is an Epilogue-Compliant story, or at least as much of one as I can tolerate. Although there was foreshadowing of this starting in book four, I feel there isn't any possibility anyone with any self-respect would marry the Ron Weasley of canon, having known far too many men such as he.  
To that end, I made Ron into the person I have seen those men become when life is not going their way, and with Ron's ego and his own failed aspirations, his temper gets the best of him all too often. For those of you who are Weasley fans or do not enjoy Lunar Harmony, you should probably stop at the end of this author's note. You will not like anything you read past it.  
-o-AN-o-  
-oOoOo-  
At The End Of All Things – Chapter One – The Alpha and The Omega  
-oOoOo-  
Although Harry's marriage to Ginevra, at first, had been joyously happy, he couldn't claim that after being married to her even six months. And although the two of them had children, which Molly claimed would calm her down, Ginevra had grown to be more like her mother in her shrewishness and browbeat him whenever she was home. She actually wasn't home all that often, as her Quidditch career had taken off and she played nearly every week, with most days spent in team practice.  
Harry had heard the rumours of her infidelity against him, but he kept up appearances for the sake of his sons and daughter. While he had wanted to name his second born son Robert Remus Potter, after Hermione's father and Teddy's father,.Ginevra, backed by the screeching of Molly, insisted he be named Albus Severus Potter to honour the men Molly wrongly felt were most responsible for helping Harry win the war against Voldemort. So instead he had a son named after men he hated to his core, by the time this son had been born, because of the lies and deceit he endured growing up in the environment they manufactured for him.  
He had relented and hoped for a third son and as many children, beyond the dozen she had promised him, as Ginevra would give him. When she announced, after the birth of his daughter, Lily Luna, she would be having no more children, Harry was crushed. He was far more devastated on Albus' seventh birthday at the lie he had to commit.  
-oOoOo-  
As had been custom in House Potter for ages beyond remembrance, when Albus turned seven years old, Harry and James escorted him into Harry's study, a room he had never been allowed in before. It was his father's sanctuary. He had been instructed by James to wear his finest robes and that being attuned to the family wards was a serious matter. After all, only Potters were allowed this privilege.  
Harry had greeted his son formally. “Welcome, Albus Severus Potter, to the very heart of House Potter. As a Potter coming of age, do you willingly accept the responsibilities of your station?” Harry intoned.  
Albus felt the words as much as heard them. Although he was only seven and knew James would take on the mantle of Lord Potter when his father passed, Albus would still have other, important, responsibilities to House Potter. He swallowed and answered, “I do willingly accept these responsibilities,” with all the seriousness a seven-year-old could manage.  
Harry placed the Potter mantle upon Albus' shoulders and said, “I, Harry James Potter, Lord of House Potter, do declare the acceptance of Albus Severus Potter of his rightful responsibilities, so mote it be!” When he had done this just last year with James, the entire manor had rung like a bell and the flash of magic had been visible for miles.  
This time was different. Albus began screaming in agonizing pain, as if the mantle was burning into his flesh. His robes were smouldering where the mantle lay. Harry grabbed hold of the mantle and tore it off the boy's shoulders and began casting numbing charms on Albus.  
He glanced up once at James and noticed the look of abject horror on his face. “James, sit down on the chesterfield,” Harry ordered and watched as James complied with his instructions.  
He looked down at Albus, who was still moaning in shock and looked where the mantle had been on the boy's neck, shoulders and chest. There, written in blood-red lettering chilled him to the bone, “Father: Michael Robert Corner. Mother: Ginevra Molly Dumbledore. This is no Potter.” Harry tore the damaged robes from Albus' body. The words repeated over the entire area the mantle had rested, much the way the scars from the blood quill Umbridge had forced him to use in fifth year still flowed across the back of his hand.  
This revelation filled him with a cold fury. He healed the boy then began weaving the lie. Albus was still in shock and had no defence against what his father did. “Obliviate!” Harry shouted, “Albus, you put the mantle on, the whole manor rang loudly like a bell and there was a bright light. Both your brother and I welcomed you once more into the family. The excitement of the moment overcame you and you told us you needed a nap,” Harry said more quietly. He then cast a light stunner on the boy, repaired the boy's robes and carried him over to the chesterfield. He then knelt down in front of James, who looked at him soberly.  
“He isn't my brother, is he Dad?” James asked soberly.  
“Yes, Son, he is your brother and you should love him like your brother no matter what happens,” Harry said a bit sadly.  
“Then why, Dad? Why did he get hurt?” the boy asked.  
“James, Albus is your brother. He just isn't my son. Your mother lay with another man and that man is Albus' father,” Harry explained.  
James' look went from one of contemplation to one of sadness. “You're going to make us forget this. That is what you already did to Albus?” James asked.  
Tears escaped unbidden from Harry's eyes, “Yes, James. And I am so sorry I have to do this, but your brother deserves the protection forgetting all of this will bring.”  
James looked thoughtful then nodded. Harry stood to obliviate James. “Dad? Why aren't you mad at Albus about this?” James asked.  
Harry looked down at his eldest and only son, “The simple answer, Son, is that it isn't Albus' fault. Obliviate!” Harry overlay the same false memories to James. “When you come of age, James, you will seek me out and ask for an explanation of Albus. I will remind you of today so the obliviation will fade. You will remember none of this until we have that conversation,” Harry said and laid a now-artificially-exhausted James down on the chesterfield as well to sleep. He walked back to the desk and sat down heavily in the chair. “Turkle,” Harry called out. A female elf popped into his office.  
“Lord Harry be calling Turkle and Turkle come,” she said.  
Tiredly, Harry asked the elf to pop the boys to their bedrooms and to tuck them in and let them nap for a few hours. Turkle complied and he was alone once more.  
He didn't know how much later it was when James wandered into the study and pulled on his sleeve. Harry looked at his son with a small, tight smile. “Did you have a nice nap, James?” he asked.  
James looked a bit out of sorts and shook his head, “I had a bad dream, Daddy. A monster was coming after Teddy, Albus and me and it was about to grab Albus. I shoved Albus ahead of me and felt the monster grab hold of my leg and pull me to the ground. I was so scared!” James said, tears forming in his eyes.  
Harry knelt down and pulled James into an embrace. “It's okay, James. You're safe. The monster is dead,” Harry said reassuringly.  
James pushed back from Harry and Harry could see the awe and surprise in James' eyes. “Really?! Daddy?! You killed the bad monster?” James asked.  
Harry nodded solemnly, “Yes, James. The monster is dead,” as was any affection Harry had for his wife or mother-in-law.  
-oOoOo-  
He remembered the day on Platform nine and three quarters. Harry looked across the platform at Hermione and could see the wariness and the slight hint of fear in her eyes. He recognised that look all too well. As a child, he had seen it enough times in the mirror to know what was happening. He also knew it had been going on for a long time from the looks of her.  
It had been rumoured her marriage with Ron was far from a happy one, with the hints that Molly had used potions, and although they had children, Harry wondered whether they were intentional or accidents, knowing that Hermione had not wanted children until after she had settled into a career. What she had of a career before their first born came along had at first been soaring through the ranks of the Unspeakables. Then her performance began to lag. She stopped seeing him for lunch once a week. Then she abruptly stopped coming to work. Finally, she stopped replying to his owl posts. That had been when James was seven years old. The last time he saw her was on that platform, seeing James off to Hogwarts for his first year, with that sad, fear-filled smile on her face.  
-oOoOo-  
Harry had become an Unspeakable upon graduation from Hogwarts. He had gone on to get several muggle degrees from Oxford in mathematics, chemistry, and physics and put it to good use in his assigned research of reconstructing temporal displacement devices to replace the ones destroyed in the Department of Mysteries. He had begun researching the interactions of certain rune clusters and having unlimited access to the Potter and Black libraries made his work much easier.  
He continued his research and experimentation, making minor breakthroughs here and there. It was slow, agonizing and interesting work. He frequently wished Hermione was with him to have someone to bounce ideas off of and to speak to about his work. She had been the only one who could grasp some of the concepts as she, too, had a firm grounding in muggle Physics. Ginevra had never been interested in what he did and thought all of the Unspeakables, her husband included, to be rather stuffy and boring.  
A month before James was to graduate from Hogwarts and just two days after he made a key breakthrough in his research, his department head, Dennis Collins, came into his workroom and sat down in his guest chair. When he saw that Harry was at a stopping point, he cleared his throat to announce his presence.  
Harry looked over and smiled, “Hello, Dennis. What brings you here? Why so glum?” he asked. Dennis was normally an all-smiles, happy fellow. Today, he wore no smile and instead looked to be on the verge of crumbling.  
Dennis Collins couldn't call himself Harry's friend, but he knew things about Harry which Harry had likely never confided to anyone else. He knew about Albus' lineage. He knew about Harry's unrequited love for Hermione Weasley. This is what brought him to Harry today. “She's dead, Harry. I am so sorry,” Dennis said, standing and shaking hands with Harry.  
The smile fled from Harry's face. “Who's dead, Dennis? McGonagall? She was always a sweet person...” Harry began but stopped as Dennis shook his head.  
“Hermione, Harry. Weasley claims he woke up this morning and found her at the bottom of the stairs. No one in the Auror Corps believes him...” Dennis continued speaking, but Harry no longer heard him. His ears were filled with the sound of blood rushing back and forth. His heartbeat was hammering in his mind. He sat down and rested his head in his hands at his desk.  
He must have sat there for hours as the sun was no longer streaming in the windows and the full moon illuminated his desk. For the next several weeks, he would come to work, sit down at his desk and rest his head in his hands, trying to work up the energy to further his work.  
The investigation, if one could call it that, into Hermione's death was executed with as little interest as possible. After all, it was a mudblood whore who died, not a pureblood male. So what if she had three times the amount than was considered safe of a particularly strong love potion running through her system, she was a mudblood. The contents of an unflushed loo was considered more important. Harry was informed by the Goblins that Ron had been exonerated of all wrong doing and that Hermione's death had been ruled accidental, likely caused by excessive drinking. The Goblins, however, did not believe the tripe the Ministry spewed and offered to look more closely into the matter for one of their valuable clients, for a price of course. Harry waved them off. What was the point? It would be the Goblins versus the Ministry and the Ministry would always win the public relations game.  
Harry's life became a shadow of its former self. He was sitting in his office once again. It was dark, the sun having set some time ago. He was lost in the thoughts of the day he had heard the fate of on of his heart's true love and noticed someone was sitting across the desk from him.  
He looked up at the person sitting in his guest chair, thinking it was Dennis still, “I'm sorry, Dennis, I think I was having a bad dream.” His eyes continued their upward motion until they settled on two of the most perfect grey circles. He stood quickly in surprise. “Luna! What are you doing here?” He had not seen the diminutive Ravenclaw since shortly after her wedding.  
Luna stood slowly. Harry could see the tear streaks on her face in the dim light. As she began speaking, tears freely flowed down her cheeks once more, “It wasn't a dream, Harry. Our Hermione is dead. She was murdered by an enraged husband over her reaction to his infidelity. He threw her into a wall then tossed her down the stairs.”  
Harry stood there in shock, not wanting to believe it to be true. Hoping he was still having a terrible dream, but knew his dreams were never this vivid and were never this horrific. He stepped over to her and, hesitantly, wrapped his arms around her.  
She looked up at him, still a head shorter than he. “Harry, you need to listen to me. The work you are doing,” she said earnestly, “needs to be completed. When you have it done to the necessary point, use this on the rune cluster,” she pulled out of his arms and lifted a necklace with a vial of crimson fluid from around her neck, “and your own blood to energise the runes. Save her, Harry. Save me. Save who you can,” she finished, tears coursing down her cheeks. She kissed him needfully, passionately. She then pulled away and fled from his office.  
Harry looked after the fleeing witch, “Luna?” he asked softly. “LUNA?!” he shouted after her, but she was gone. He looked at the necklace and the vial and heard her words reverberate through his mind. He put the necklace on and hid it beneath his robes and his shirt, knowing with certainty that one failed to trust Luna at their own peril.  
-oOoOo-  
He left the building and floo'd home. He was surprised to see Ginevra was there. “What are you doing here?” he asked in a cold voice.  
“Oh, Harry, I am so sorry. I just wanted to let you know that I won't be around much for the next month. Mum floo'd and insisted I come over to the Burrow. Some sort of family tragedy, but not sure what. I am sure it is nothing of importance,” she babbled, throwing some clothes into a trunk.  
She finished then shrunk the trunk and walked to the fireplace. She turned around to blow him a kiss, but he was no longer in the room. She shrugged, threw the floo powder into the fireplace and was gone.  
He waited until she left and severed the floo connection to the manor. One of many things Harry had only told Hermione concerned his ability to apparate. While a normal wizard or witch could apparate one hundred to one hundred and fifty miles, Harry could apparate to the far side of the planet, if he chose.  
He took the next two weeks to complete the work on the rune cluster. He took a final week to verify each one of the stored spells in the sequence had not degraded in the three weeks since he had cast them. The evening he completed the final tests, he made a list of things to be done.  
That night, he apparated to just outside the wards at Hogwarts, walked up through the main gates and stopped at the War Memorial, naming all those who had died at the Battle for Hogwarts. He read the names and found he could still remember their faces even now.  
Remus Lupin, Nymphadora Tonks, Severus Snape, Alastor “Mad Eye” Moody, Colin Creevey, Fred Weasley, Lavender Brown. The Goblins had been responsible for determining the names of others who fell that day. Tracy Davis, Pansy Parkinson, Millicent Bulstrode, Blaise Zabini and Daphne Greengrass from Slytherin; Hannah Abbot, Betheney Martins, Gabrielle Bettencourt from Hufflepuff; Michael Terrington, Rosemary Harcourt, Tiffany Burgess and Robert Dugdown from Gryffindor; Marietta Hartford, Mersibel Shinster, Marcus Godfrey and Courtney Denton from Ravenclaw had all fallen during the battle. All had fought alongside Harry, in the end. He walked away, back towards the gates. He was almost to them when a voice he recognized shouted out to him.  
“Lord Potter! Please wait!” Headmaster McGonagall shouted to him.  
He stopped, turned around and waited for her to catch up to him. “Hello, Headmaster,” Harry said quietly, just a whisper above the wind. He noted she had tear streaks down her cheeks as well.  
Minerva looked at him critically, “Would you join me for some tea?” she asked, each word drenched in a sombre pain.  
He shook his head, still holding in his own grief for the only woman he had ever really loved.  
“I'm sorry for the loss of your friend, Lord Potter,” Minerva said, barely holding her own composure.  
“I am certain you knew how much you always meant to Hermione, Headmaster. She was your most devout student,” Harry said. He began turning away.  
“Lord Potter, since you are here, would you not like to visit with your children?” Minerva asked hesitantly.  
Harry continued turning away, “No Minerva. Please take care of them for me,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. He took two steps outside of the gate and disappeared without even a slight pop.  
Minerva nodded to the empty space where he had stood. She thought she knew the young man better than he knew himself and didn't want to put anyone else in harm's way by providing a warning. She was certain, however, he had no intentions of seeing tomorrow.  
-oOoOo-  
Harry apparated to the public apparation point at the Ministry and returned to his workroom. Based on his testing, the rune cluster was complete.  
He had already picked the point in time to which he would return. All he had needed to complete the ritual was the blood of the traveller and the one thing he would never have been able to acquire himself; the ingredient Luna had given him. Unicorn blood, willing given, collected by a virgin maiden. This gift, beyond the shadow of a doubt, proved to him that, while Luna had been tortured at Malfoy Manor, the bastards hadn't raped her.  
He gathered the materials, shrank them into a small trunk, left the Ministry building and apparated as close as was safe to Stonehenge, the stone circle standing upon the crossing of no fewer than seven ley lines.  
He cast notice-me-nots and muggle repelling charms all around the area, spiralling inward until the entire area, stones and all, was hidden from magical and muggle view.  
He pulled out the shrunken trunk, expanded it once more and emptied it item by item. He placed the shrunken altar in the centre of the circle and expanded it. He levitated the altar, aligned the septagram carved deeply into its top with the ley lines and set the altar back down. The septagram began to glow faintly.  
He set the rune cluster in the centre of the septagram and aligned it with the intersections of the ley lines. Once it was aligned, the rune cluster began humming with the power being channelled through it.  
He then removed two potion flasks and a rune-covered goblet from the trunk. He drank the contents of one of the flasks, a blood-replenishing potion of Goblin manufacture, to increase the volume of his blood available for the ritual.  
He poured the contents of the second flask, a milky white potion which glowed with a faint purple hue, into the goblet. This was the blood-fusing draught. Once the flask was empty, the contents of the goblet changed colour to an unnatural, sickly yellow.  
He poured half the contents of the goblet into the ley line channels on the altar, attuning the altar more thoroughly with the power coming from the ley lines. He held the goblet up in both hands and focused all thought on the time and place of his return. He then drank the remaining contents of the goblet and immediately began feeling the effects of the potion on his blood and magic.  
He turned his mind inward, focusing his magic on his blood, draining his core into the blood flowing through his veins. The potion made this much easier as it altered both his blood and his magic to become more compatible with one another. He could feel the blood burning within his veins with the power flowing through it.  
He reached one last time into the trunk and removed the large rune-covered dagger and held it in his right hand. The runes and enchantments on the dagger prevented wounds caused with it from being healed by magical means and interrupted a witch's or wizard's magic from healing the wounds consciously or subconsciously.  
He knelt down on the alter and looked at the culmination of his life since Hogwarts. His research had indicated to him that, while time turners were limited to a maximum turn back of eight hours due to the energy required. A turn back of every hour required one point one times the amount of energy as the previous hour. A time turn back eight hours would exhaust the magic of an average witch or wizard. For him to go back to his chosen point in time was going to require astronomical amounts of energy. The only way to achieve this level of energy was to use the power of the ley lines, the conduits of the planet that converted radiant energy into magical energy and imbued witches, wizards, elves, Goblins and every other magical and living creature on the planet with life and energy.  
He removed the necklace Luna had given him from around his neck. He carefully removed the stopper from the vial and held it in his left hand. He poured the unicorn blood into the stasis chamber in the top of the rune cluster. The humming from the rune cluster grew louder and the light coming from the entire assembly grew to a blinding crescendo.  
He then took the dagger, put it against his own throat and in a voice he could no longer hear, he swore his vow. “For Hermione!”  
He drew the dagger across his throat and sliced cleanly through the jugular vein. The glowing red, magically-infused blood poured out of him. He dropped the dagger and supported his weight on his arms and knees with his throat continuing to drain out into the rune cluster, which absorbed the blood and the magic within it.  
Ninety-eight seconds after his blood began pouring onto the rune cluster, just before he passed out from loss of blood, his entire world exploded in a bath of bright, pure light.  
-oOoOo-  
As the blood was absorbed by the rune cluster, the stasis field on the unicorn blood chamber degraded, as planned, and the magically-infused blood became mixed with the highly-charged unicorn blood. This finalized the alignment of the ley lines with the rune cluster and began feeding raw magical energy from the entire planet into the rune cluster. This was like lighting a magical fuse, which would cause the power running through the ley lines to be gathered and then released, in its entirety, into a single, focused purpose.  
This had the result of setting off every alarm at every Ministry or Department of Magic across the world. While those alarms were sounding, a cascade of energy was building all around the planet.  
One of the reasons Harry had been unwilling to share his research with others was because everything he had read indicated the stored spell sequences, coupled with the focusing and determination runes carved into the rune cluster would cause a cascade effect on anything or anyone using the rune cluster. Once his reason for living no longer existed, he had literally nothing to lose.   
If it turned out to be a fizzle, the will he left behind, written for him the day after Albus' seventh birthday, would take effect and Ginny's indiscretions would be forever sealed as long as no one in her family or lineage attempted to make claims against House Potter except those granted by the will.  
As it was, his will would never be executed.  
Once the stored spell sequence completed and the rune cluster finished aligning the ley line foci, energy charged the rune cluster at an unimaginable rate.  
When the ley lines began draining, they pulled the magic from their surroundings, drawing magic from every living thing, the air and the earth. The only thing it could not draw energy from was Stonehenge and anything located within the stone circle.  
When it had absorbed all of the life energies, the nature of the ley lines forced the very matter of the planet to be converted to magical energy in an effort to restore the power of the ley lines. This energy, too, was fed into the reaction.  
Harry had no idea the reaction he had started would literally convert everything but the stone circle he was kneeling within to magic in an effort to feed the process. Once there was nothing left to convert, the ley lines failed, releasing all of the stored magical energy into a single, focused thought.   
Just before the stone circle was annihilated, Harry's essence was blown backwards through the time continuum with the force of the stored magic. The collapse of the spell converted the matter which made up the stone circle into a pulse of pure x-rays. Where once a planet had been, only a pulsing, rune-covered dagger was left behind.  
-oOoOo-


End file.
